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by downerending 2219 days ago
Not to mention that GUI designers have a penchant for moving things around in the interface on every release. So even if you knew where that thing was, you don't necessary know now. Consider Microsoft Office, for example. Ugh.
2 comments
frosted-flakes 2219 days ago
Microsoft Office has barely changed since Office 2007 and the introduction of the Ribbon. They screwed up the File menu by making it full-screen†, but apart from that I can't see anything to complain about.

† The original 2007 "Office" menu like in File Explorer or Paint is loads better.

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downerending 2219 days ago
It could be that the interface is so confusing and horrible that it only seems different each time I dig into it.

Each time I take a new job, I have to slog around in the config screens trying to figure out how to turn off all of Outlook's !@#$ing awful "corrections" that send my email in variable-width fonts and change my '--' strings into em dashes and so on, thereby destroying my emails to users. Every time I do this, it seems like the layout of this awful pile of config dialogs has rearranged itself. Is it just PTSD?

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frosted-flakes 2219 days ago
Yeah, well, Outlook is a different story. The Ribbon interface isn't really suited to a mail client, and Outlook has so much historical baggage that makes it ridiculously hard to use. I try my best to not use it, so I don't know how much it's changed.

But Word, PowerPoint, and to some extent, Excel? The Ribbon is really well thought-out and easy to use. It feels intuitive in a way that the old bloated menus never did. And the command search feature is actually really useful, and teaches you where a command is located so you can just go straight there next time.

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downerending 2219 days ago
This is hopelessly pedantic, but Outlook is (now) part of Microsoft Office. And matters to me the most since it's the only part of Office I hardly ever use.
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frosted-flakes 2219 days ago
Not hopelessly pedantic, it's very true. It's just that I've always hated Outlook and I'd honestly forgotten about it when I wrote that original comment.
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ses1984 2219 days ago
Maintaining backwards compatibility isn't a problem that's unique to GUIs.
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downerending 2219 days ago
At least in Unix/Linux, I doubt the reshuffling of command flags and arguments is more than one percent of what happens in GUI programs. And it's probably far less.

Command-line people take backward compatibility very seriously. GUI designers seem to think it doesn't matter, because oh, everything's so easy to find. Fie on that.

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